Why I Stopped Shaving My Pubic Hair (And You Should, Too)

There comes a time in a man’s life when he realizes he’s been engaged in a highly unnatural self-destructive activity. There comes that moment of decision when he needs to pick himself up by the jockstrap, look himself in the mirror, and get a grip on the fact that he needs to stop hurting himself.

I should just “cut” to the chase here, as embarrassing as it is. Until very recently, I’ve been shaving my pubic hair.

I’m sure some of you will laugh and mock and scoff and guffaw. That’s okay. You are little people with little souls, and your derision only strengthens me. It takes a brave man to step up to the world and announce something as humiliating as I just did.

To the rest of you — those who aren’t laughing — thank you for understanding. Your compassion means the world to me.

I’d been doing it for at least a dozen years. I don’t know why I started doing it, only that I was emotionally lost and spiritually confused and needed an outlet to express my pain.

Sure, I never drew blood, yet it was still a form of “cutting.” On the surface — where razor met flesh — it was a seemingly benign form of self-harm, yet there lurked the ever-present possibility that it would lead to a dangerous downward spiral ending in heartbreak, possible hospitalization, and inevitable self-castration.

I also came to terms with the fact that I was being a fucking hypocrite, and I vomited a few times when I realized it. For years I was very public and very open about the fact that I loved women who had so much pubic hair, their genital region looked like an aerial photograph of a Vietnamese jungle. A woman really can’t have enough pubic hair. I would willingly pay taxes to provide pubic-hair transplants on demand for any woman who desired them.

Yet I was preaching one thing in public and doing another thing in private — and no, I’m not proud of it, thank you so much for asking. I’d step into the shower, grab the Gillette MACH3 Turbo Men’s Razor, and shear my man-wool as if I was a self-mutilating sheep. It was duplicitous of me to be advocating great gobs of female pubic hair on one hand while shaving off my Man Muff with the other hand.

For a number of reasons, I put down the razor and let my garden grow. As I’ve already hinted, the primary reason was self-respect. It was hard to live with myself knowing that I demanded of women what I was too weak and cowardly to do myself. It was hypocritical to be a bush advocate and not join the sisterhood in this struggle.

I did it to help the environment. The razor, the shaving cream, the chlorinated water — where does the consumerist madness end? I realized that if I could save a mere one razor a month, a family in the Amazonian rain forest would have enough coconuts to survive. I decided to think globally, act pubically.

I did it for personal safety. If I were to, say, fall from a ledge and land on my pubic bone, my Man Bush would cushion the fall. The same would apply were you to punch me in the pubic bone — my bush would serve as a sort of headgear or boxing glove, protecting me from harm. Shaving your pubes is like going into a wrestling match without a protective athletic cup. It’s like heading into battle with a sword but no shield.

I did it as a partial hat-tip to my “wild” side. Sure, I still shave my head and face with an unforgiving razor and emu oil. But this new combo — no hair up top, plenty of hair down below — was like an extreme version of the mullet. Rather than “business up front, party in the back,” it’s “business upstairs, party in the basement.” It’s like I’m a space alien up top, a woolly mammoth below.

I did it as my subtle way of joining The Revolution. FUCK the Man! Okay, I don’t really mean “fuck” him, but The Man is a Grade-A jerk, and that’s what my pubic hair screams for social justice from the depths of its follicles to the tips of its split ends as it nestles and smirks snugly within my boxer briefs. You can try and sell your capitalist male-beauty standards to me, Mr. Man, but down beneath I am still as wild as my Neanderthal ancestors who nestled behind their pubic hair in the cold Northern European winters.

But I still shave my balls and taint, because that shit’s disgusting.